The Sims 2 expanded upon The Sims in many official, and unoffical ways. First off, no longer were you tied to a fake-3D 45 degree isometric top-down perspective. Now you could scroll, even WALK in your own houses and buildings that you create. You could finally drive a car somewhere, with several vehicle options available to pick from ranging from bicycles or your own two feet, to people rendering up things like monster trucks and movie cars. There was so much unofficial awesome DLC for the game that it was incredible. The Sims themslves offered more expansion than previous too, looking a lot more like photorealistic people and being a lot more user-editable via more conventional methods than others.

But another awesome thing is the engine allowed for some hackable ways to get what you want, whether that was building a basement, building an evil-genius pad into a mountainside, or a big abandoned factory complete with all the various pipes, holes in the wall, and other stuff. The Sims 2 really had the best creativity in my humble opinion. This was probably the most open-ended of the series. So much so I did my early music videos on YouTube in this as an art medium.

I think the first place I built was what was basically a mansion fit for a movie starring Michael Caine and Kathleen Turner circa 1982-1983, with an Elton John and that guy who wrote "Small People" doing the soundtrack. It sat on the shores of the ocean and would have been a 5+ Million dollar mansion in real life.

One of my greatest masterpieces though, was finding some 3rd party downloads, and building an abandoned factory/warehouse, it seriously looked like something you would have seen in Phoenix City alabama. Holes iin the walls, pipes, hanging fixtures, wrought iron bars sticking out randomly. I was planning a music video using that scene but never did.

There was the "Stay the Night" house, designed to kind of look like a 60's rambler in the mid 1980's where a fictional couple would be shot for the scenes. People called this one creepy. I did not have a very good storyboard for it which is probably why the "creep" factor was high on this one.

The "Flipside" house was another one intended for a music video as well, which was also seen. THis house was another 60's style rambler where my character would race a remote controlled car in the background. That video was a Mix of The Sims and another game called racer.nl. I also used it as a prototype for the kind of house I'd buy or build during my single years. I used a DeLorean in the video because that was the only car I liked consistant with both games. Nobody had made a Fox Body Mustang GT yet.

There was another house in the works for "Family Roundtable" off 2006's Agent Blue demo as well but I never completed it, and had a challenge because I would need to put my Sims on the roof, and cue up an attractive female sim to wander down the street just before the guitar solo to fulfill the vision in my mind. I was also having problems deciding if I wanted to make it split level.

I was working on a desert-based "GEM Computer Products" computer shop for "Rose Colored Glasses" for the 8088 recording in here too, with a bar down the street to use for a cover of "Passion Play" by Night Ranger. I also dabbled a LITTLE with the "Fallen Empyre" - a desert based castle representative of a former band's memory.